We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.

Link up your After School Activities, Crafts and Adventures! We'd love to see them!

Friday, September 27, 2013

Mancala may be the oldest game in the world, which begs
the question of why I've never played it. I figured it was time, at the age of
37, that I give it a try. And I knew EXACTLY who would make a great opponent -
my oldest son.

In case you haven't noticed from all the DIY games I create and
blog about, he is a total gamer.

To make our mancala board, I grabbed an empty egg carton.
I cut the egg cup tray and lid apart. The egg cup tray with its 12 compartments
is perfect for this game!To make the two trays, called mancala, that sit at
either end, cut the egg carton lid using the ends only (discard the middle). Use
hot glue to attach the lid pieces to either end of the egg cup tray.

To help my son and I keep straight which side of the tray
and which mancala was whose, I placed colored dot stickers in the bottom of the
egg cups - yellow on one side, green on the other. Then I printed yellow and
green mancala labels on sticker paper to adhere to the mancala trays.

Now I grabbed some blue glass babbles to use as our
"stones."

We loaded three babbles in each cup, leaving the mancalas
empty. Now we reviewed the game rules by watching this great YouTube video.

The objective is to hoard all of the babbles on your side
of the board. If your cups are all empty, you've lost.

I was so close to losing that my son was practically
doing a victory dance, when one or two plays put me back in the game. Call me
the comeback kid, because I won our first round. My son isn't always thrilled
to lose, but this time, he didn't even care.

This game is perfect for kids with a math brain and totally
encourages strategic thinking. I knew my
son loved our mancala when he asked a friend to play it less than an hour
later. Success!

This great idea came from ReMake It! by Tiffany Threadgould. This books is full of inspiring
craft projects for kids, all made from recycled goods. It is one of the best
craft ideas books I have ever come across.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

To help my oldest son practice polygons, I grabbed a busted bulletin board my
husband had tossed in the trash (not
quite dumpster diving, but I wouldn't put it past me to do that either for the
sake of my kiddo's education!).

The bulletin board was a thin layer of cork paper over
corrugated cardboard. I cut it and glued two plies together, making two
smaller, albeit thicker, bulletin boards.

Now I carefully glued pushpins in place in a grid pattern.
Use the strongest glue you can find, like super glue or gorilla glue. I printed
a grid and with a ballpoint pen, punched the location of the dots into the
cork, then dabbed glue in the imprints I'd made, and inserted a pushpin.

Before my oldest son started made polygons, he watched a
10-minute video about what a polygon is (and isn't). This video was made by a
classroom of kids and perhaps because of its child "actors," he was
captivated.

When finished, he went through the eight shapes on the
polygon cards and did his best to stretch the rubberbands around the pushpins
to emulate the number of sides and angles pictured. Some shapes were easier
than others!

When little brother wanted to give it a try, we stuck to
simpler shapes - the triangle, square, and rectangle.

Both boys had fun and were excited to show off the shapes they made!

WORD OF WARNING: If
the rubberbands are tugged on aggressively, the pins may come loose and pop out. Always play along and encourage kids to slowly and gently remove the
rubberbands to prevent a potential safety hazard.

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.

Link up your After School Activities, Crafts and Adventures! We'd love to see them!

Friday, September 20, 2013

It's been awhile since we played the Brown
Bag Touch and Feel guessing game, but when my oldest son picked out a book
at our library about touch recently, I wanted a way to revisit this particular
sense. Given how much my son's writing lacks juicy details, a little adjective
practice couldn't hurt either.

This game was easily played by both of our boys (a 3rd
grader and preschooler). It's hard to tell which one of them enjoyed it more!

To prepare, I traced my oldest son's hand on heavyweight
cardstock and cut out a series of hand shapes. To this I glued a variety of
textures. I also used a clear plastic disposable dessert plate, and drew the
hand on the bottom with permanent marker.

With my sensory hands made, I wrote adjectives to
describe each on an index card.

Fluffy = quilt batting

Rough = burlap fabric

Feathery = feathers

Bumpy = created with paper-punched craft foam dots

Wet = water on the clear "hand" plate

Noisy = bubble wrap

Soft = polar fleece fabric

Leathery = faux leather left over from a DIY Halloween
costume

Sticky = clear contact paper

Scratchy = sandpaper

When my oldest son came home from school, I wrapped a
handkerchief around his eyes. (Yes, I made him wear my breast cancer survivor
"think pink" bandanna!)

I put the sensory hands in front of him and asked that he
touch each one and describe it to me. This was more challenging than we both
originally thought. "It's rough," he said of both the sandpaper and
burlap hands. I put them both back in front of him and asked, "Do they
feel the same? If I couldn't feel them, I would think those two had the same
texture based on your description."

Hm.

After working harder to describe each uniquely, the
blindfold was removed. Now I gave him the index cards I had made earlier and asked him to match
the adjectives with the correct sensory hand.

Later when our four-year old played the game, he didn't use the
bandanna; we just let him look, feel, and describe what he was touching. His
big brother was thrilled to read the cards to him so he could match the
descriptive words with the correct textures. I was astounded to see how well he did!

My oldest son read two great children's books as part of this
activity. Touch by James De Medeiros focused
on texture and pressure, as well as demonstrating our
feelings for someone through touch.

Soft and Smooth,
Rough and Bumpy by Dana Meachen Rau explained how our skin and nervous
system is responsible for our sense of touch.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

My oldest son's mastery of most of his multiplication
facts and his understanding of division make it the perfect time to mix all types of math sentences together for a fun game.

To download the game I made, click here. The 6-page PDF
includes a 2-page game board and four pages of missing sign math problem cards.

Print, trim the game board, and tape together. Cut and
shuffle the cards.

Find a few game pieces to use. My son chose his mini
football players. Anything will work such as two different coins, buttons, or poker chips.

As I was shuffling the cards, a neighbor boy rang the doorbell to play. I explained we were playing a math game and his eyes lit up. I
invited him in and my son and his buddy played on a team against me.

(I have a
pretty strict policy against posting pictures of other children on my blog
without a parent's permission, so you'll just have to trust me that this was a
riot!)

Our two game pieces were placed on the board before the
first square (in the upper left corner). The boys drew a card from the deck and
determined which math sign was missing (plus, minus, division, or times sign).
If their answer was right, they moved their game piece to that sign on the
board. The game card was placed in a discard pile.

Now it was my turn to do the same. The boys and I took turns until we both
neared the finish.

In order to win, I had to draw an addition problem (the
last sign on the board). As soon as I did, I was the victor. The boys had so
much fun playing, they didn't even care that they'd lost.

Nothing like practicing good sportsmanship AND your math
skills at the same time!

(Write letters on post-it notes and have your child drive an ambulance through every letter "a" to get to the hospital. Great kinesthetic activity and easily adaptable for older kids practicing any number of skills!)

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.

Link up your After School Activities, Crafts and Adventures! We'd love to see them!

Friday, September 13, 2013

This week was my first time volunteering in my son's 3rd
grade class. The teacher had me work one-on-one with a few students helping
them learn their spelling words. It reminded me of just how boring studying
spelling words can be. In brainstorming new ways to practice with my own oldest
son, I came up with this idea.

This little game focuses on learning five words.

Quiz
your child or look at their pretest to see which words on the list they are
struggling with. Those are the five.

For this game you need to print five bushels and a
special die. Download the 6-page PDF I made here. Print onto heavyweight
cardstock. Cut, fold, and glue the die together.

Either laminate the five bushel pages or slip them into
plastic sheet protectors. Label each on the line at the top of the page with
one challenging spelling word (or use sight words if that's what you're working
on). Use a fine tip-dry erase marker.

Now grab your kiddo and tell them it's time to "Fill the Bushel."

How to Play

The player rolls the die. If they roll a four, for
example, they find the page with that number on it, look at the word at the top
of the page, and copy it onto one of the apples in the bushel with the
dry-erase marker.

If the player rolls the worm, they roll again until the
die shows a number. That number tells them what bushel to erase a word from;
that was a bad apple and it must be thrown out. If they roll the number that
has no words yet, he/she moves on without any erasing (rolling again to see
what bushel to add a word to).

Kids can either stop rolling when one of the bushels is
full or keep going until ALL the bushels are full, keeping track of which were
filled 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.

The repetition of writing the five words again and again is
sure to help him remember them when it's test time.

My son got caught up in the game and forgot we were
practicing spelling. That totally fills MY bucket.UPDATE: A blog follower came up with a great adaptation for her kiddo. She plans to use this little game to help her kindergartener practice writing certain letters. (What a good idea!!) I modified the PDF so the apples have ruled guidelines to help kids. Download this variation here.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

It is scorching hot here. Summer's hanging on with all
her might and we're praying for rain and cooler temps. And a breeze. Oh, how
amazing a cool breeze would feel on these 90+ degree days!

Thankfully, this weather won't hold and we're bound to
get the crisp mornings and leaf-shaking breezes that are inevitable with fall.
Hopefully our windsocks usher them in.

This simple paper craft is easy enough for preschoolers and
yet still enjoyable for elementary-school-aged kiddos. My boys were surprised
by how easy it was to turn a bunch of paper rectangles and circles into a
phenomenal fish!

Trust me when I say that the hardest part of this project
is step one.

Step 1

Roll your large piece of construction paper into a tube
and glue it. Let me assure you, this is trickier than one would think. For my
oldest son's windsock, we used the glue gun. For my youngest son's, I used school glue, holding it in place while it dried by gently-applied clear tape
and at the ends, paperclips. When it was dry, we moved on to Step 2.

Step 2

Cut lengths of ribbon (ours were roughly 16 inches long)
and staple along the bottom of the tube. Cut a shorter length of ribbon
(approximately 8 inches long) and staple each side to the opposite end of the
construction paper tube to create a handle.

Run a bead of school glue around the tube (at the end
where the ribbons dangle) about an inch up from the bottom. Begin adding the
brightly colored circles. This first layer will cover the staples. Repeat this step until you have five or six layers of
circles, overlapping each row slightly.

Step 5

Cut a 1-inch-wide strip of black construction paper and
glue it around the windsock slightly overlapping the top of the last row of
scales applied. If necessary, use a piece of clear tape to hold it in place
while the glue dries.

Step 6

Punch (or cut) two circles from black paper for eyes.
Add these to the fish on opposite sides of the windsock toward the top.

Step 7

Let it dry and hang it inside near a window. When the temperature cools down and the windows are open, you'll be able to see the beautiful tail (aka
ribbons) of the fish blowing in the breeze.

Want a book to pair with this? Why not read TheRainbow Fish, the delightful tale of a fish
with brightly colored scales.

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.

Link up your After School Activities, Crafts and Adventures! We'd love to see them!

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